


Merry Christmas, Soldier

by lillianmmalter



Series: Sleepless Nights [3]
Category: Agent Carter (TV)
Genre: Angst, Canon Disabled Character, Domestic Fluff, F/M, Gen, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-19
Updated: 2016-12-19
Packaged: 2018-09-09 17:53:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,899
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8905783
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lillianmmalter/pseuds/lillianmmalter
Summary: Christmas Day isn’t always happy. For some, it’s a time of year that haunts them.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Unending thanks to Ellix, who is an absolute brick. Thanks also to Kar98k for reassuring me about the military stuff and irisdouglasasiana for just reassuring me in general.
> 
> The title comes from this bit of black propaganda (demoralizing and/or false information put out by the enemy pretending to be friendly):
> 
> [This](http://www.antiquehomestyle.com/plans/standard/1923/23standard-collingwood.htm) is Peggy and Daniel's house in this universe, in case you want a visual reference of the layout (or don't understand why there are doors between all the rooms - old houses are weird like that).

 

The trees were exploding.

As if hell wasn’t already a frozen forest in Belgium, now the goddamned trees were exploding over their heads, shooting wooden shrapnel in every direction. Daniel’s pretty sure Simmons yelped something about splinters in his ass a while ago, but there was no telling if he’d been hit or was just being his usual smartass self until Daniel could leave his cover and check on his men himself.

Indistinct shouting echoed in the distance. The shelling stopped for a few seconds, and then a few seconds more. Daniel poked his head out of his foxhole and shook splintery snow from his helmet. Everything was silent and still.

Cautiously, he scrambled out of his foxhole on limbs stiff with crouching in the cold.

“Keep cover!” he hissed at Schrijvers and Morris as he passed them. Morris grumbled something, but both of them stayed put, so Daniel let them be. He made his way to Simmons’s foxhole and crouched down in it. “Everything okay in here?”

“Yeah, sure, Sergeant,” Simmons said grinning sardonically. “I always wanted splinters in my ass for Christmas.”

“Well, you could always turn around next time and get splinters somewhere else,” Daniel said. “I hear some ladies love a pierced pecker. Really adds an extra something in the bedroom, especially if you’re otherwise lacking.”

Corsi snickered and elbowed Simmons in the side, his uncontrolled shivering making the movement look more spastic than joking.

“What, you know from experience?” Simmons asked, elbowing Corsi back with a shiteating grin on his face.

“Well, I wouldn’t want to kiss and tell,” Daniel said. He was already looking over his shoulder, eyeing the terrain. “You seen Greaves?”

“Last I saw him he was in his hole the same as all of us,” Corsi said.

“He seem alright to you?”

“If by alright you mean he couldn’t feel his feet and he was almost out of ammo, yeah sure. Same as the rest of us,” Simmons said.

“You still worried about how he’s handling Kelly getting hit?” Corsi asked.

“They were best friends and Greaves had a front row seat to see Kelly get shot in the head. Yeah, I’m worried.”

“You’re really gunning for that battlefield commission, aren’t you?” Simmons said with a small smirk.

“I’m gunning for the rest of us to make it out of this battle alive and for no one to do something stupid cause he’s not thinking right,” Daniel said. He eyed the terrain again, his ears straining to hear any sounds that the fighting would pick up again. “Just keep your heads down and try not to get blown up.”

The men grunted their assent and Daniel left them, scrabbling out of their foxhole to find Greaves’s.

Since Kelly got hit, Greaves was in there alone, nothing but his own brooding thoughts to keep him company and keep him sane. It was a recipe for disaster, for Greaves if for no one else. Daniel really didn’t want to lose anymore men.

When Daniel slid into his foxhole, Greaves was holding a leaflet picturing a small girl with wispy blonde hair next to a brilliantly lit candle, a grim soldier who looked already dead looming over her shoulder.

“‘Daddy, I’m so afraid’? That the propaganda they shot at us last night?” Daniel asked in greeting.

“Yeah.” Greaves grimaced and handed it over. “It’s the back that’ll kill you.”

“What? We’re all gonna die and our poor kids back home will be orphans?”

“Pretty much.”

Daniel read it, feeling anger settle in his gut at the blatant emotional manipulation. _Man, have you thought about it, what if you don’t come back… what of those dear ones?_ What a crock of bull. And he’d thought the ones with naked women cheating on their soldier men were bad.

“‘Peace on earth good will towards men’,” he read aloud. “They’ve got a hell of a lot of nerve quoting that at us.”

“Not all of us are gonna make it back though,” Greaves said.

“No, but not all of them are gonna make it back home either. And even as outnumbered as we are, they haven’t licked us yet, and I’ll be damned if I let them do it now. 'Nuts!' Remember?”

“I haven’t seen my kids in two years,” Greaves said, ignoring him. “My son wasn’t even walking yet when I left.”

Daniel clapped a hand on his shoulder. “Which means now he can run to greet you _when_ you come home having helped us trounce these bastards.” Greaves grimaced at him and Daniel squeezed his shoulder. “Besides, it’s not like we’re completely alone. I heard at Mass last night that Captain America’s in the area. Might be coming to finally give us some backup.”

“Yeah, he and Patton are riding in on Donner and Blitzen,” Greaves said bitterly. “They’ll be here any minute.”

Daniel shrugged, unable to hold back a childlike grin at the thought. “It would sure be something to see him in action.”

Greaves nodded vaguely, so Daniel took that as good enough for now and squeezed his shoulder again before cautiously scrambling back out into the open. His boots squeaked and crunched against the snow as he walked; his breath crystalised against the scruff of beard he hadn’t had the will to scrape off his face that morning. He clenched and unclenched his frozen fingers around his gun and did his best not to shiver.

To be home in the warmth of his own bed would have been the best damn Christmas present he could ask for right now, the pamphlet was right, but he was here instead, waiting for the Germans to attack in one more big push to take the little crossroads town they were defending. He couldn’t afford to let his guard down, for himself or his men. If the Germans took Bastogne, it would be nothing for them to push down the road to Antwerp and maybe change the course of the war, undoing all the hard work the Allies had done since the spring.

They couldn’t afford to get sloppy. Christmas Day or no, they had to defend their positions and-

A roar ripped through the air around him and everything was fire and pain and blood. Then brief, ringing silence overtaken by the echoing crack of guns and the booms of more tank fire.

Dazed and aching, Daniel tried to sit up, only to see pieces of his own femur sticking out of his right thigh. What was left of his pant leg was bloody and covered in dirt and melting snow. Wood and metal shrapnel punctured his skin and served as the foundations for tiny fountains of blood to bubble up seemingly everywhere. The pain gripped him then, sharp, stinging, fiery pain the likes of which he’d never felt before. He could barely breathe from it.

More gunshots rang out and he clawed at the ground beside him, ineffectively trying to get to cover.

“Medic,” he gasped. “Medic!”

There was shouting and hands on him and someone stabbed a syrette into his hip. Daniel couldn’t stop shaking. The smell of his own blood surrounded them so thickly he could taste it. The medic cursed. Daniel couldn’t even see who it was, couldn’t think, couldn’t breathe. Gunfire cracked and popped around them and the medic jerked and collapsed over his leg. His bones ground against each other and Daniel screamed in pain.

He sat up with a jerk and gripped at his leg, fighting back an unpleasant jolt of horror when he found it ended well before the knee.

The blood. Where was the blood? Where was the medic? He squeezed his eyes shut and breathed in and out as deeply as he could make himself.

Then, slowly, the softness of the sheets and the dry warmth of the quilts pooled around his waist registered and someone hummed next to him. He opened his eyes.

Peggy.

That was Peggy.

His wife.

He was in their bed in their house in Maryland.

He was inside, and safe, and no one was shooting at him.

He had a desk job now, he had children, a long-term publishing contract.

The war was over.

Bastogne was ten years ago. A decade behind him.

Daniel squeezed his eyes shut and buried his face in his hands.

_Fuck._

Peggy hummed in her sleep again and Daniel edged out of bed on still-shaky limbs. There was not going to be any more sleep for him tonight. Even if he could go back to sleep, he didn’t want to and he’d be damned if he pulled Peggy out of her seemingly good dream if he didn’t have to. It was a miracle he hadn’t woken her up already.

He used his crutches to stand and moved to the end of the bed where he’d thrown a sweater earlier in the night for just such an occasion and pulled it on over his flannel pajamas. As he passed the hook where their bathrobes hung he paused before putting his robe on too. The house was freezing. No wonder he’d dreamed of Bastogne.

Daniel checked in on the kids and saw lumps of bedding on each of their beds when he peeked in their rooms. That would have to be confirmation enough that they were safe for tonight.

The stairs creaked in the darkness. It took him longer than usual to navigate them with his crutches because he couldn’t stop shivering. The house was so cold he might as well be outside in the snow.

Finally he got downstairs, but when he attempted to turn on the light in the living room nothing happened. A different lamp revealed the same result.

“Dammit.”

Power outage. Which meant the electric baseboards weren’t working and wouldn’t until the power company fixed whatever the problem was. He knew he shouldn’t have listened when their contractor sold them on the baseboards instead of the gas-powered boiler and old-fashioned radiators that came with the house.

Bastogne creeped along the back of his neck and Daniel shivered violently.

He hated winter.

Daniel made his way carefully through the furniture in the living room and snagged a pillow from the couch on his way to the fireplace on the far wall. He dropped it on the floor and fumbled along the mantle until he found the matches, then lowered himself down to kneel with the pillow supporting his stump and struck a match. He’d laughed at Peggy the first time she insisted on having fires pre-built in the fireplaces, but quickly conceded the wisdom of it during their first snowstorm in the house. He was certainly grateful for it now.

The newspaper they used for kindling caught fire quickly, the tinder catching light shortly after that. Daniel held his hands up to the flames and did his best to shake off the bitter chill of Belgium. It helped to look up on the mantle and see pictures of the kids.

They were studio portraits, which Peggy insisted on getting done yearly. Daniel didn’t like them as much as the candid snapshots he kept in the photo albums in his office, but his chest loosened as he gazed at them and he couldn’t help a fond smile from taking over his face.

Jackie had hated the suit they put him in this year. He only wore it because Peggy finally caved into bribing him with ice cream after they were done, which consequently got all over the suit and ruined it. If Jackie didn’t eat that way most of the time Daniel would suspect him of doing it on purpose.

Lala, on the other hand, had loved her dress so much she insisted on wearing nothing else for the next week, screaming her head off when they finally took it away from her to wash it. It was her shoes they had problems keeping on her that day. Every day, if he was being perfectly honest. His little girl loved her feet bare and dirty. It drove Jarvis nuts.

Looking at the pictures, you’d have no idea any of those battles took place. Both children looked angelic and perfect, even by the standards of people who weren’t their parents. Or maybe especially by those standards. That’s why he liked his snapshots best: they actually hinted at the chaotic stories that made up their lives. There was very little artifice in a snapshot, especially the ones Daniel took. There was no hiding, no lies, no misdirection, just the subject captured as they were in a moment. Nothing else in his life was so simple.

The fire finally caught on the firewood and Daniel felt brave enough to face the cold in the rest of the house. He grabbed a small flashlight from its hiding place in the drawer of one of the end tables, then made his way through the dining room and into the kitchen.

The vinyl floor was hellishly cold on his foot; Daniel cursed his tendency to kick his sock off when he slept and his absentmindedness for not thinking about it before he left his room. He hopped faster across the room to compensate and almost landed on his ass for his efforts when one of his crutches slipped.

“Daddy?”

Daniel jerked and turned around. “Jackie. What are you doing up?”

“It’s cold.”

“Yeah, but it’d be warmer in your bed.”

“I had a bad dream and you weren’t in your bed and Mummy snores.”

Daniel’s heart broke a little at the sight of the scared pout on Jackie’s face, even as he fought down a laugh at Peggy’s expense.

“Yeah, I had a bad dream too. Come here, buddy.” Daniel braced himself with his crutches before Jackie charged at him, so he was prepared for the soft thump against his leg as his five year old son wrapped his arms around it like a lifeline. Daniel couldn’t resist petting his hair. “How about some hot cocoa? I was just about to make some.” He didn’t mention that he was still planning to liberally flavor his own cup with some of Peggy’s bourbon.

Jackie nodded against his leg.

“Go wrap yourself up in the afghan on the couch and come back in here. I’ll get the cocoa started.”

Jackie whined and it took a bit more coaxing and the bribe of control of the flashlight, but eventually Daniel managed to get his leg back so he could move freely around the kitchen. He propped open the door between the kitchen and the dining room so he could keep an eye on Jackie, then collected the ingredients he’d need. The stove, thankfully, was gas and not affected by the blackout; it took mere moments to light all four burners for light and heat. After a second’s thought, Daniel turned on the oven as well and left the door propped slightly open. There was no world in which that was safe, but Daniel valued warmth over safety tonight. The ghostly crack of guns was still too close for him to feel safe anyway.

Daniel filled a large pan with milk, sugar, a dash of salt, and a few chunks of unsweetened chocolate and started heating it on one of the burners, turning the flame down low so it wouldn’t scorch. Jackie seemed to be entertaining himself under the dining room table, alternating between throwing the beam of the flashlight around like a disturbed lighthouse and covering it with his hand or the blanket wrapped around his shoulders in an attempt to play shadow games with his own bones and the knotted yarn of the throw. Daniel left him to it and began whisking his concoction, letting the rhythm of the soft, metallic _chchch_ and the changeable swirls of chocolate in milk take him out of his own head for awhile.

The chocolate was nearly all melted and Daniel had a decent froth going when a light scrape sounded from the direction of the dining room.

“Midnight hot chocolate party?”

Peggy stood in the doorway, Lala clinging to her even as the angle of her head told Daniel she was passed out on Peggy’s shoulder.

“It can’t only be midnight,” Daniel said.

“It’s closer to 3 AM,” she said. Daniel nodded and went back to whisking the cocoa. When he didn’t say anything, Peggy stepped nearer. “My question is, why are my boys both out of bed at this time of night? With fires lit everywhere. It’s warmer under the covers in this cold.”

“It’s a night for nightmares apparently.”

“Oh?”

“I have no idea what Jackie’s was about, but it doesn’t seem to be bothering him anymore. We’re probably gonna have to find new hiding places for the flashlights at the rate he’s going, though.”

“And yours?” She gently touched his arm. It was all he could do not to collapse into her, not to soak up her heat and love and comfort. He worked his jaw for a moment before he could get any words out.

“Bastogne.”

“Darling.” Her hand pressed a little harder where it rested on his arm and he saw more than felt her kiss his shoulder through his layers of clothing.

“It’s cold and the heat’s off. It was bound to happen.”

“Why didn’t you wake me?”

“No sense both of us being sleep deprived. Besides, you seemed like you were having a good dream. I didn’t want to interrupt.”

“I want you to wake me up if it’s something like that.”

“I dream about the war a lot, Peggy. You’d never get any sleep if I woke you up every time I dreamt I was back there.”

“But not all of those dreams are about losing your leg, are they?”

Daniel turned his head slightly in her direction, shook it, then turned back to the stove. “Hot chocolate’s almost done,” he said.

Peggy sighed and moved to the cupboard where they kept the mugs. “I assume the emergency bourbon is for you and the marshmallows are for Jackie,” she said.

“You’d be right.”

“You could have raided the liquor cabinet in my office. I wouldn’t mind.”

“We keep the good stuff in there. It’d be a crime to mix it with anything.”

“True.”

“You gonna be able to carry all those with that koala attached to you like that?”

Peggy smiled. “I’ll manage. I feel better having her close to my body heat anyway. Her room was freezing and you know she never keeps her blankets on more than fifteen minutes after we tuck her in.”

“She was still under them when I checked on her.”

“Will wonders never cease. They were gone by the time I did.”

“She must have sensed you were coming.”

“It wouldn’t surprise me.”

She set three mugs down on the counter next to the stove and prepped them one-handed with the additions each of them preferred. Daniel couldn’t help smiling when he saw her pop a couple of marshmallows into her mouth despite not putting any in her mug.

Jackie materialized behind them as though he had smelled the extra sugar from the next room.

“Mummy, I want lots and lots of marshmallows. I want a hundred marshmallows.”

“You’ll take what I give you and be happy about it,” Peggy said, even as she popped five more of the little puffs in Jackie’s mug than Daniel would have added. “You shouldn’t be up this late eating sugar as it is.”

“But I like marshmallows. I really, really, really like them, Mummy.”

“Do you? I couldn’t have guessed.”

Daniel took the cocoa off the stove and divided it between the three mugs, adding more to Jackie’s than he originally intended simply to use it all up. Jackie glued himself to Peggy’s hip and watched the process with serious eyes.

“Jackie, please, I can’t move if I’ve got you wrapped round my legs and your sister wrapped round my neck,” Peggy said shortly.

“I can take her when we get in there,” Daniel said. Peggy studied him and nodded, no doubt guessing that he wasn’t just offering in order to make her life easier. “Come on, scamp, leave your mum alone.” He ruffled Jackie’s hair, making him duck away with a scowl.

Daniel turned and crutched out of the kitchen without waiting to see if Jackie would listen. A series of clicks behind him let him know Peggy was turning off all the burners and the oven. He told himself it was safer that way even as another violent shiver took him over just before he entered the living room.

It had been ten years. He was fine now.

He sat down on the couch in the seat nearest the fire and breathed a sigh of relief at how warm the room was. It helped that Peggy had closed the French doors separating the living room from the hallway. He should have thought of that. A few moments later, Peggy came in with the kids, shutting the doors to the dining room behind her and sealing off the living room completely.

Jackie had been given the dubious honor of carrying his own mug into the living room and Daniel winced at the thought of chocolate stains on the carpet even as Jackie walked slowly and carefully toward the couch. Daniel watched the marshmallows heaped in his mug jiggle with each step until his boy set the mug down on the coffee table and grinned up at him.

“I didn’t spill!”

“Good job,” Daniel said earnestly, relieved. “Where’d that afghan go?”

“I think I saw it under the dining room table, which is a rather queer place for a blanket to be,” Peggy said, shooing Jackie to go get it. “Don’t you dare slam that door when you come back,” she called after him. Daniel raised an eyebrow at her as Jackie audibly huffed in annoyance and she rolled her eyes.

Peggy set down the mugs she was carrying, then carefully lowered Lala into Daniel’s arms without waking her. Lala’s tiny hands spasmed for a moment and she pouted before settling against him with a sigh. He adjusted her a little so most of her weight was on his lap, loose and trusting and more still than she ever was when she was awake. Her little fingers curled into the edge of his robe over his heart and he felt the small thrill he always got when he held one of his kids this way. It wouldn’t be long now until neither of them would put up with it. Jackie was already getting too independent for it most of the time.

“Do you still want this, or is she enough?” Peggy asked. She was holding the two mugs of hot chocolate she’d brought in with her, which she must have picked up again while he was in Daddy Land.

“I definitely still want that,” he said.

She handed his to him and sat beside him, scootching over a little to make room when Jackie crawled in between them with the afghan bunched over his lap.

“How’re you gonna be able to drink your cocoa when you’re over here and it’s all the way over there?” Daniel asked him. Jackie’s eyes went wide and distressed at the realization. Peggy snorted at them.

“I’ll get it,” she said, handing it to him and settling back into place with a smile. “Here. Don’t spill any on that blanket. Your Auntie Rose crocheted that for us for our wedding.”

Jackie made another noise of annoyance at being told what to do yet again and concentrated on sucking a marshmallow into his mouth. Daniel took his son’s cue and sipped from his own mug, raising an eyebrow at the taste. Peggy certainly hadn’t skimped on the booze.

They sat in silence for a while, each of them sipping their cocoa and listening to the crackling of the fire. At one point, Peggy got up to throw another log on, causing sparks to flare up the chimney like tiny fireworks. When she sat down again, Jackie leaned into her side and she put an arm around him.

Daniel took a deep breath, savoring the warm, familial atmosphere, the pleasant scent of the burning firewood only adding to the scene.

“David’s Jewish,” Jackie informed them then, out of the blue. Daniel and Peggy looked at him curiously. David was Jackie’s best friend at school.

“We knew that, Jack,” Daniel said.

“Jewish people celebrate Christmas for eight days, did you know?”

Daniel nearly choked on his hot chocolate. On the other side of Jackie, Peggy was struggling to keep her composure.

“That’s not quite how it works, Darling,” she said. “Jewish people don’t tend to celebrate Christmas, as a rule. They have their own holidays.”

“But he already got to open his Christmas presents! I saw them!”

“He’s already opened some of his Hanukkah presents,” Daniel corrected. “Jewish people celebrate Hanukkah this time of year, not Christmas.”

Jackie pouted. “We should be Jewish, then. I want to celebrate Hanukkah. I want lots of presents.”

Peggy was hiding an enormous grin behind her mug.

“Tell you what,” Daniel said, “if you still want to be Jewish by the time you’re 18 you can convert and celebrate Hanukkah and all the other Jewish holidays with Ana. We might even join you sometimes. How about that?” Jackie hunched his shoulders and sucked his last marshmallow into his mouth instead of answering. Clearly that wasn’t what he wanted to hear.

“What brought this on, anyway?” Peggy asked. “Did David get a present you were hoping for?”

“He got a Captain America coloring book!” Jackie yelled. “And a Captain America toy, and marbles!”

Daniel’s stomach lurched. “Jackie, inside voice. You’ll wake your sister.”

Lala was still blissfully unaware of anything around her, though. It was Peggy who looked startled. Daniel watched her closely.

“You’re named after him, you know,” Peggy said softly, petting Jackie’s hair.

Jackie wrinkled his nose. “Captain America’s name wasn’t Jackie.”

“Your middle name, smart aleck,” Daniel said, jostling his shoulder and getting a wide grin out of him. “Steven.”

Jackie’s face glowed. “Really?”

Beside him, Peggy was wearing the sad smile she always wore when they talked about Steve Rogers. Daniel caught her eye and smiled back at her, his heart swelling when the curve of her mouth broadened and her eyes softened into a look of love aimed at him.

“He saved your daddy during the war, did you know that?” she said, still smiling at Daniel. “I’ll be forever grateful to him for that.”

Daniel blinked in acknowledgement and took another sip from his mug.

Jackie’s eyes widened and his mouth gaped. “Really?”

“How d’you think I got this leg?” Daniel asked, twitching his stump up slightly in emphasis. “I got hit, bad, and couldn’t get to a real field hospital until Captain America and his Howling Commandos broke the blockade around my unit.” Because of course the Germans had captured the field hospital days before he got hit, leaving only a few improvised and woefully unprepared aid stations scattered throughout the town. His men had stuck him under the counter of an abandoned grocery store and left him bleeding onto the floor hoping for the best along with 30 or so other wounded men while a civilian nurse tried to keep them all alive with scraps of rags and a stream of prayers that sounded more like curses. Actually, some of them probably were curses.

“You woulda died if Captain America wasn’t there?” Jackie’s face was as sober as Daniel had ever seen it.

“Probably.”

He almost had anyway. Between the blood loss and the infection attacking his already malnourished body he’d been as surprised as anyone else when he actually woke up from his surgery. His Christmas wish each year since the kids were born was to hope they never had to experience something that made them wonder about being alive like he had. That wasn’t an experience he’d wish on anyone.

“Was he big?”

Daniel blinked back into the present. “Who?”

“Captain America! Was he big?”

“I don’t know, I never saw him. You’d have to ask your mum that.”

“Why?”

“Because I knew him during the war. We were friends.” Jackie’s eyes got huge and he looked much more impressed by this than at the news Daniel owed the man his life. Daniel was glad for it.

“You knew Captain America?”

“I did.” The sad smile was back.

“Was he big?”

“Not at first.”

“Cause he was little and got made bigger, right?”

“That’s right,” Peggy said. “But it wasn’t his size that made him great. It was his courage, his loyalty, his desire to do the right thing that made him who he was. Some of the same qualities that made me fall in love with your father, as a matter of fact.”

Jackie wrinkled his nose at that, clearly uninterested in his parents being schmoopy at each other. “Tell me a story,” he demanded.

“About your father?”

“No! Captain America!”

Daniel’s stomach lurched uncomfortably again, so he took another sip of his cocoa, draining what was left in the mug. It was petty to be jealous of a dead man he actually admired. He set his mug down on the side table nearest him, running a soothing hand up and down Lala’s back to make sure she stayed asleep. Peggy was telling Jackie some yarn about the Captain and Bucky Barnes rescuing a little girl’s favorite doll from the rubble of her house after some battle. It might have even been true.

Jackie’s eyes kept blinking heavily, even as he was clearly enthralled by the story. Peggy pulled him closer to her and started stroking his hair. The action was almost like an off-switch when he was tired, and by the time Peggy wrapped the story up, Jackie was asleep against her. Daniel envied him that. He rescued Jackie’s half-empty mug from drooping completely out of his hands and set it beside his own on the side table.

“That story have any truth in it?” Daniel asked quietly.

“Does it matter if it does?”

Daniel smiled. “No, I guess not.”

They were silent for a while, then Peggy said, “It was actually me and Bucky helping the little girl. Everyone in her family was dead except for her and her mother. I got the impression she used to have a lot of siblings.” Peggy sipped from her mug then stared at the floor a moment before continuing. “She had such empty eyes. I’ve never seen a little girl with eyes so empty. She did manage a small smile when we brought her back her doll, but it was more the ghost of a smile than the real thing.”

“Where was the Captain during all this?” Daniel asked.

A fond smile flickered on Peggy’s face for a moment before disappearing again. “While we were digging through the rubble, Steve was off distracting a couple of reporters who showed up with his Captain America act. He hated doing it, but the girl’s mother was beside herself with grief and the rest of their neighborhood wasn’t much better. Steve wanted to spare them the indignity of having their loss filmed for posterity. He was green with envy later when he found out what we’d been up to.”

Daniel watched her face. She always looked different when talking about the war, when talking about Steve Rogers. “An act, huh?”

“Sometimes. When the cameras were rolling. Sometimes he’d put on his suit and look more like himself than he did out of it, but he never did any of it for the fame.”

“No, none of us who were over there for the right reasons were doing it for any kind of acclaim.”

Peggy hummed in agreement.

They lapsed into silence again. Before long, the warm crackle of the fire nearly soothed Daniel to sleep despite himself.

He was saved from nodding off when the lights by the hall came on in a sudden flare of illumination and the Christmas tree flickered to life in a riot of color in the front window. Daniel blinked at it for a moment and petted the curls smooth on Lala’s head.

“I thought you turned those off before we went to bed,” he said conversationally.

Peggy smiled and rubbed gentle circles on Jackie’s back. “I did, but then I figured leaving them on all night for Christmas Eve would be perfectly acceptable, so I came back down and plugged them in again. Much good it’s done us till now.”

“It’s technically Christmas now. Has been since we got up.”

“So it is. Let’s not wake the kids just yet and remind them, though.”

“No.” Daniel blinked the sandpaper out of his eyes. “I actually wish I could join them.”

“We could go back to bed. Lay in a pile and snuggle until the kids wake up again.”

“I might fall asleep.”

“That’s rather the point.”

“I don’t want to risk having another nightmare with the kids in bed with us like that. I don’t want to scare them.”

“Darling-”

“It’s fine, Peggy. I’ll take a nap after lunch if I need it.”

“And that would be a better time to have a nightmare, would it?”

Daniel sighed. “It’s just different, Peggy.”

They fell silent, the occasional pops and quiet rumble of the fire the only sound in the room.

“You never talk about it, you know,” Peggy said quietly. “I can understand why you mightn’t want to, but of everyone in your life I hope you know you’d be safe telling me. I wouldn’t judge you or pity you. I don’t now and I won’t ever.”

He turned his head to look at her. Her eyes were sad and the corners of her perfect mouth were downturned, looking suspiciously like the disappointed frown she aimed at the kids when they misbehaved.

Daniel sighed again. “It’s not that I don’t trust you, Peggy, it’s just. Talking about it is. It’s.”

“Difficult.”

“Yeah.”

Peggy was quiet for a while after that, but Daniel could see her thinking and left her to it. If he could leave Bastogne behind him forever then he would. Except a part of him was proud to have fought there, to have been trapped there, proud to have survived it, in the end.

He could do without the damn nightmares, though.

“I’ve noticed there are certain times of year you sleep better than others,” Peggy said, bringing his attention back to her. “Christmas is always hard for you, as are certain weeks during the summer. But Christmas time is always the worst.”

“Yeah.”

“Because you lost your leg at Christmas.”

Daniel sighed. “Yeah.” He smoothed his hand gently down Lala’s back and concentrated on the rise and fall of her rib cage as she breathed. The fire crackled beside them, heating them almost more than was comfortable. Daniel was glad for it.

“I remember reading the reports as it was happening,” Peggy said. “The bitter cold, the lack of supplies and reinforcements. I remember being furious that such poor planning and intelligence work might lose us such a strategic position.”

Daniel watched the shadows of the flames flicker on the floor.

“The first moment I truly respected you came when I learned you had fought there.”

Daniel turned his head sharply to look at her. “What?”

“Some of the Commandos told me what it was like in Bastogne after they came back to London. They were full of admiration for what you had all managed to do. It takes true character to fight and to suffer like that when the outcome is so uncertain.”

“We were doing what we were trained to do. What we had to do.”

“Yes.”

Daniel studied her. Her face was full of love and respect and there was worry for him too, hiding in the corners of her eyes.

He hated being the cause of the worry hiding in the corners of her eyes.

“The medic who helped save me died as he was tying the tourniquet to my leg,” he said softly, not looking away from the love in her face. She reached over and took his hand. “They shot him in the back, and when he fell, he fell on top of me.”

One of the sharp edges of Daniel’s shattered femur had stabbed the man in the stomach as he fell. He remembered the wrong, twisting sensation in his leg as the body collapsed on top of him. He remembered the disturbing wet heat of the other man’s blood soaking into his clothes where his own blood hadn’t managed to reach or where it had already started to cool. To this day Daniel wasn’t sure what had actually killed the man, the bullet in his back or the deep puncture in his gut. No amount of logic could convince Daniel he hadn’t killed one of his own men when that man had only been trying to save him.

He shuddered and squeezed Peggy’s hand, burying his nose in Lala’s hair to remind himself where he was now.

“I don’t know how long I was trapped there before someone pulled him off me - probably only a couple minutes at most, but it felt like forever. They dragged me onto a stretcher and into Bastogne itself, not that it was much safer there. The town center was pretty much rubble after the Germans' bombing raid the night before, and they were doing their damnedest on Christmas Day to break our lines and take it.

“I faded in and out of consciousness throughout the day. Everything was cold. They left me inside an abandoned grocer’s with at least 30 other guys and some poor civilian nurse who flinched every time the sounds of the fighting picked up or seemed to come closer. We were all convinced the Germans would bomb the town again, but by then I didn’t really care anymore. All I could think about was how damn cold it was and how out of it I felt.

“At some point, the nurse started singing Christmas carols to herself. In French, of course, so even if I’d wanted to I’d only have been able to sing along to half the words. I don’t know if she was trying to comfort us or herself, but it seemed so at odds with what was happening I started to hate her for singing them.”

Peggy squeezed his hand. “That’s why you can’t stand ‘Silent Night’, isn’t it?”

“Yeah,” Daniel said, forcing his jaw to unclench and willing his stomach to settle. “I hear it and it brings me right back to that blown out storefront every time. I can smell the blood and the dust and the sweat that smells like fear.”

“But you survived it.”

Daniel nodded. “Your boys broke the blockade late in the afternoon the next day. I think I passed out at some point, because one moment I was snapping at the nurse to stop singing and the next I was in the back of a transport trying not to throw up every time the tires skidded on the ice or bumped over something in the road.”

Peggy lifted his hand and kissed the back of it. “You survived,” she whispered. “I’m so glad you survived.”

Daniel smiled at her, firmly ignoring the roiling in his gut that started the second he first mentioned the carols. “I did.”

“I’m sorry, Darling. I shouldn’t have made you tell me. You look all pale now.”

He shrugged. “It’s what I dream about when I dream of Bastogne. Some part of it or another. Sometimes the days get mixed up or it’s the medic singing the Christmas carols instead of the nurse, but that’s what I dream about, that’s why a part of me has hated Christmas ever since.”

Peggy made a pained noise. “Darling…”

“I don’t hate it as much now, if that helps,” he said, smiling at her. “It’s starting to mean family again. Colorful lights in all the windows and good food and lots of presents.” He grinned down at Jackie for a moment before meeting Peggy’s eye again. “It means us and the kids thousands of miles away from that snowy hell that keeps wanting to haunt me. It’s starting to be a good thing again.”

Peggy squeezed his hand, tears in her eyes. “Daniel… I’m so glad you’re the one here with me now. I’m so grateful you lived to be my husband.”

“See?” he said, aiming for a teasing grin and almost making it. “Christmas is already better this year than it has been in the past.”

She studied him, her face flashing through dozens of emotions he was too tired to try to decipher with so little sleep.

“Happy Christmas, then, Darling,” she said finally.

Daniel looked at her, her hair bound up in a mess of curlers and pins and who knew what else, and at their son curled into her stomach, dried chocolate on his face and his mouth wide open, and smiled at her, at the love he felt for them. He felt their daughter’s warm weight, limp and trusting and utterly carefree, against his chest and felt safe, the clack of the guns finally faded back into the past where they belonged.

He was home. He was alive. He’d made it.

He smiled. “Merry Christmas, Peg.”

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> I feel a little guilty for throwing this angstfest into a holiday season so filled with light and wonderful fics, but I knew I had to write it the second the idea popped into my head.
> 
> The weather in this fic is somewhat fictionalized as Maryland doesn't tend to be bitterly cold in December, and the low for Christmas Eve into Christmas in 1954 was only in the mid 30s. We'll just pretend a cold front moved in overnight and dropped things down to the teens.
> 
> Some history:
> 
> The Siege of Bastogne (December 20-26 of 1944) was the largest engagement of the Battle of the Bulge. Taking the crossroads town of Bastogne would have been an important step in the Nazi's last ditch efforts to force the Allies back from their eastward push after D-Day. Hitler desperately wanted his troops to succeed and sent three Panzer Armies (basically, a shit ton of tanks) to cross the Meuse River and seize the port city of Antwerp before the Allies could counterattack, thereby splitting the Allied lines and, it was hoped, forcing a surrender from Britain and the US so Hitler could concentrate on fighting the Russians.
> 
> Of course, it didn't work out that way, and a big part of the reason why it didn't was Bastogne.
> 
> Enduring the siege was miserable. The weather was bitterly cold and foggy most of the week, with ever deepening snow, making reinforcements and additional supplies difficult for the trapped American troops to get. Most medical supplies and medical personnel were captured just before the town was surrounded, meaning most seriously injured men had no hope of survival in the improvised medical aid facilities, at least one of which was bombed the night of Christmas Eve. Added to that, the defenders' line was stretched thinner than it could sometimes bear. They suffered some 3,000 casualties, 1,641 of those from the 101st Airborne alone. But when the Germans asked for surrender on December 22nd, then Brigadier General Anthony McAuliffe famously answered, "NUTS!" It was a real morale-booster for a lot of the American men.
> 
> As if being surrounded in the bitter cold at Christmas time wasn't bad enough, the Germans kept dropping black propaganda on the American troops.
> 
> Here's the leaflet Greaves is looking at, which the Germans dropped on Bastogne's defenders Christmas Eve in an attempt to lower morale (check out the wording; some of it is almost identical to the leaflet I got the title from). This was the most famous of all the leaflets dropped on the 101st during the siege:
> 
> The defenders of Bastogne were relieved by elements of Patton's Third Army on December 26th. For the purposes of this universe, I'm treating Patton's arrival and Cap's fighting through the Hydra Blockade as happening at about the same time and having the same effect of relieving the trapped soldiers.


End file.
